TheLastManInAmerica

The New York Times has rejected an op-ed article by Senator John McCain on the grounds that he didn’t follow strict guidelines that would have him give a detailed strategy for the War in Iraq and rising violence in Afghanistan. Prior to this, Senator Barack Obama published his own article in the newspaper where he laid out  his own detailed plans on how he would handle the War on Terror should he be elected president. McCain’s piece, however, resembled that of a high school English teacher, grading a student’s paper, criticizing every point of the presumptive Democratic nominee’s plan for action. But the Times need not let their bias shine through so completely; if they support Obama and wish to push McCain into stating his view, fine, but don’t be upset with the result because it only shows that he has not given it enough thought or perhaps likes it the way it is.      

      Obama described a transition of power that would see the redeployment of U.S. troops out of the country and in 16 months would hand over the reins to an autonomous Iraqi Government. There would be troops left to train Iraqi security forces and quell any remnants of insurgent forces but all in all we would be done with military operations in
Iraq. His opponents call this surrender but Obama asserts that it would help with his strategy to focus our attention once again on Afghanistan, the country that grabbed us by the scruff and yanked us into the War on Terror. Obama’s plan is exactly that, a plan. Whether it’s right or wrong only time could tell but at least he has the first part down.      

      Senator McCain, however, gave hardly a look to the past and no look to the future; instead he focused on the only thing that has worked in this war. Still flying high from the success of the troop surge that has seen a subsequent drop of violence to its lowest point in four years, McCain gave no estimate of a planned withdraw from the country, merely stating that he expects to have most of the troops home by the end of his first term in 2013. But McCain was happy to point out that 15 of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress had been met and that Sunni Muslims, once enemies of the State are now joining the Sons of Iraq and fighting insurgency. Well, riddle me this: if everything is going so swimmingly in Iraq, why do we not have a plan to withdraw in the works? His plan of action remains counterinsurgency. How? With troop surge after troop until one side runs out of troops (hopefully them)?   

               Where the New York Times support lies is no big secret but if they want to play the part of Fox News they should be smarter about it and not present only one side of the story. They should let McCain’s words speak for themselves as it’s obvious he has no other course of action than action itself. This whole situation could actually be useful for Obama if the Times let it be; they’d have McCain in print, outlying his strategy of complacency in this war. Barack is a man with a plan, which is more than anyone can say about the senator from Arizona. And who knows if the plan would work, but so what, not much else has in this war. At least the man has direction and isn’t content with playing the part of Moses for the next 30 years.

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